Melton Mclaurin references an enormous number of historical events in his book Celia, A Slave, which tells the story of slavery through the eyes of a female slave. The book is based on the trial of Celia, slave girl to Robert Newsome, who was tried for his murder in Callaway County, Missouri, during the 1850s. Celia was found guilty of the killing, and sentenced to death.
The trial was the climax of a tumultuous three decades in Missouri and neighboring state Kansas. The Missouri Compromise, an agreement signed into law in 1820, was at the root of the trouble; it allowed Missouri to be admitted into the Union as a slave-owning state, on the condition that Maine be admitted into the Union as a free state. The agreement was seen as a victory for supporters of slavery because it established a precedent for allowing slave states into the Union. Dissent began bubbling almost immediately afterwards, and it continued to grow for the next thirty years until the 1850s, when demonstrations grew violent and there were riots as both supporters and opponents of slavery clashed violently in the streets. Against this backdrop, Celia's trial took place. Some believed that she would never get a fair trial in the existing political climate, a belief that the author explains and in some ways provides plenty of evidence for in the narrative.
Melton McLaurin is renowned for his historical research and for his writings on subjects such as the history of African American marines and the cotton industry in the South. His best known book is Knights of Labor in the South, about the Union movement. He joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina in 1977, becoming Professor Emeritus twenty-seven years later.
